AP Interference?
AP Interference?
Hey everyone, I'm setting up a dual ISP at home—AT&T Fiber and Verizon 5G on a Cisco RV340. Everything seems to be working well, especially with the WAN failover active since AT&T is down for about eight hours. My router is just an Ethernet device, so I’m using an Ubiquiti U6+ AP in the kitchen ceiling to give my home network Wi-Fi coverage. The kitchen works best for this, but I still struggled getting a strong signal into my room, which caused my iPhone to disconnect often.
I had an extra 8-port switch and a budget TP Link AP nearby, so I connected my computers and the AP in my room with a different SSID and lower power settings. This helped keep my own AP running without it dropping out. However, this setup made all Apple devices lose internet access—whether they were on my kitchen AP or the Ubiquiti one.
I have plenty of IP addresses available on my DHCP server, so I don’t think there was an IP conflict. Some sites like Google worked fine, but most others didn’t. I’m not sure if the two APs were causing interference, but it’s possible they were overlapping channels or using similar frequencies. When I unplugged the TP Link AP, everything returned to normal.
Do you think this kind of issue usually comes from signal overlap or something else?
Auto channel choice is usually ineffective. You must manually assign the primary AP to a specific channel while setting the secondary router or AP to another. This means you’ll need to use a DFS channel for one if both require 80Mhz bandwidth. Another issue arises when the router lacks an Access Point mode—have you turned off its DHCP server? Even then, features like UPnP might interfere with the main router, making it hard to disable them. That’s why, when using a router as an AP, I ensure it’s flashable so you can disable all router settings.